


Grayson, The Keys, the Sword, and the Tester

by Flora (florahart)



Category: Honor Harrington Series - David Weber
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 18:51:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/298916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florahart/pseuds/Flora





	Grayson, The Keys, the Sword, and the Tester

**Author's Note:**

  * For [azarias](https://archiveofourown.org/users/azarias/gifts).



**Grayson**

 

One of the things Abigail struggles with is the ease with which her peers go outside. Her head understands: there are no environmental toxins on Manticore, and certainly on the Island and any other base nothing is outside of the control of the Navy, but the casual on-the-spot decisions to swim in untreated water, stripped down to standard-issue underwear? The five-minute conference upon the announcement of a weekend of liberty which leads to everyone on the floor packing a bag for Sphinx and heading into the wilderness? For fun? That's the stuff she doesn't put into letters home.

It's not that her mothers would worry about the exposure (they would, for the same reasons she does); it's that she gets _so irritated_ with herself about the way she can't just put aside those fears when there's no order and no urgency, that's hard to swallow. She got here by demanding her place, and it's not like her to struggle with initiative, or to stay home with nothing but her books while literally everyone she knows in this new life she's building is on the shuttle, and she can't tolerate the notion that her father might have been right to refuse her repeated requests to enlist. What he doesn't know won't hurt either of them.

She'll just have to find a way.

It doesn't help that she's only invited along for even the smallest of outings maybe a third of the time, the reasons for which she understands, dislikes, and doesn't accept as an excuse. And she really ought to have worked harder on her resolution to take those invitations as often as possible (she hasn't; sometimes the reflexive revulsion wins out), because this trip isn't for fun, and teamwork is vital to their collective success, upon which everyone's marks rely on this excursion for which no rational person would suggest they're adequately prepared--this won't be in any letters home, either, because she can just hear her middle and most worry-prone mother demanding to know who sends this many first-year cadets out on their own, anyway, and she's not prepared to defend the practice quite yet.

Her hands feel too flat on the tabletop in their tent as she runs through the exercise parameters with her team; Gryphon's gravity is wearing and this is only the third day. They set up the new camp half an hour ago, and already half the team is snapping about trivial things and squabbling over rope and meal selections while they other half grumbles about things they can't do here that would be no problem 'at home.'

Fortunately, Abigail is never at home so there's nothing new to miss, and the squabbling just reminds her of her sisters. She's enough older than the youngest to have been charged with their oversight many times, and this, she knows what to do with. She stands, ignores the ache that immediately moves into her calves, and starts issuing firm, clear orders.

If she's surprised when her peers stand straighter and obey, she definitely knows better than to show it.

 

 **The Keys**

 

Abigail thinks a lot about the choices that allowed her ancestors to survive, about her gratitude for risk-takers and her indebtedness to the system that they developed on the fly in order to remain whole in body and spirit. She thinks about this more than ever when she's in the classes that are the most difficult for her, the ones where she isn't sure she's going to be able to measure up. She has the math, and she has every science course she could get her hands on, but that's not all it takes to be what the Royal Manticoran Navy needs, and there are some days that are harder than others.

Unlike her tall and extremely physical role model, Abigail is of middling height, even for a Grayson, just like her father and her oldest sister, and she's not particularly efficient at building muscle mass. That means that on Saganami Island she's considered short and slight, and the genetic legacy of those ancestral choices is nowhere near as useful in this modern setting as they are at home. They're also not nearly as useful as Lady Harrington's own modifications were, and it's hard to feel that gratitude and indebtedness when she's on her back on the mat less than a minute into her first sparring match, when Lola Park-Alfred has a knee in her belly and a snarl on her face, but she does it anyway. She needs to.

Lola has nine centimeters and probably twelve kilograms on Abigail, so the hard fall and complete failure aren't much of a surprise, but that doesn't make it any less embarrassing to be beaten so very quickly, and it doesn't make the deep bruise to the low edge of her ribcage any less purple.

She could get it treated, and she hears Lola comment on her apparent lack of awareness regarding modern medicine when they're changing three days later, but she opts to keep the bruise as a reminder. It's not a scar, but she can feel it long after it heals, and her gym scores improve rapidly.

By the end of her first semester, she's comfortable with the notion--all right, not comfortable, but working on it--that she won't ever match Lady Harrington herself. Fighting for herself in the course final, though, against actual soldiers who neither fear her father nor assume they need to hold back because they might hurt her, feels like victory. Even while she's on her way to the infirmary afterward with a cold cloth to her face to stem the bleeding.

Lola comes in while she's waiting, with her hand pressed to a nearly identical wound, but she takes Abigail's advice about finding a cold cloth as an insult and scowls in a chair in the far corner instead.

That's fine. Abigail's in less pain, and low-tech isn't another word for stupid. She waves Lola ahead when it's her turn, and holds back a grin at the obvious eyeroll.

Gracious isn't another word for stupid, either.

 

 **The Sword**

 

It isn't until Oliver Wesley finds her on her way down from the fifth floor of the library that anyone bothers to tell Abigail that Lady Harrington has returned. Apparently it's been all over the 'nets for four hours or so, but she had her connection off through her private physical drill session and shower (Tuesdays are particularly brutal and she gives herself _six_ minutes for the shower, which means no mail check time), and then muted while she worked through the tac survey. All of which winds up meaning it's only as she's exiting the lift that Oliver sees her and asks if she's heard.

Going to class is a lot less appealing than his immediate suggestion once he convinces her he's not selling her a bill of goods, and she hates that she has to say no, she has band boundary dynamics to get to.

Her Manticoran and Sphynxian classmates rarely ask her out for a celebratory (or any other kind of) beer because they expect her to be uninterested, because they all _know_ how Graysons are religious and backwards, and of course it follows that they can't have fun, can't attend a party--she opts against thinking further along this path because it only infuriates her, and she's clear on how it's received when someone in her position acts on frustration. So that's the Manticoran cohort, but it's not as though she has _no_ countrymen here.

Country _men_ , most of whom are exactly the men who think she needs a brand of protection in which she's not interested, and many of whom, faced with the option to deal with her as a bona fide equal who can spar with the best of them or probably beat them at running the math for translation, just ignore her.

He crinkles his nose at her and asks, really? She can't spare an hour?

And she can't, seriously, because this is the Academy and she's never not going to have a lot left to prove, but she hesitates, and then shrugs and says maybe, just this once, and hopes he doesn't think she's being coy or something because Grayson social structures suggest that if he does, she might wind up having to awkwardly disentangle herself from a relationship she never meant to have, and while she's known Oliver for ten years and likes him just fine, she has a career to see to.

He grins and says he knows just the place, but he sounds like a friend, not a wooer, so maybe all is well.

It's just as well she agreed; five seconds later she checks her mail while she walks. There's a notice from her instructor authorizing the afternoon and evening off. She's not sure whether to be glad or sorry she didn't know about that before drills.

 

 **The Tester**

 

Advanced Tac is definitely where she's supposed to be, but Abigail never the less has to stop and breathe for several seconds before she enters the classroom. She checks her uniform--not that she has a mirror, but she can still brush away imaginary lint and feel whether her collar is straight--and opens the door.

It feels like the first day of sparring, right down to the fact that Lola Park-Alfred is two rows in front of her and a few seats to the left. Oliver's down at the front and he turns around, looking about until he spots her, then raises a brow and waves at the open seat next to him. Abigail shrugs and shakes her head; she's fine where she is. And she's not _quite_ ready to be three meters from this particular instructor, even if it does make her a coward.

Which is why she hasn't been spotted yet when she first speaks, and she feels a happy little thrill at the approval in the one good eye, the recognition of what it must mean for her to be here, and she's glad not to have moved down; there's no time for anything but the look, in the context of the day's lecture, so there's no way for there to be a fuss, and the moment in which one might be made will pass before Thursday.

And then the lecture gets started for real and two hours later Abigail has a hundred new ideas to assimilate and roughly _two_ hundred questions, all of which make her feel a little stupid and a lot inadequate. She gathers up her things and reminds herself that one can always expect tests which stretch one's ability (even in areas that have nothing to do with faith and only to do with one's own interests), and the Tester is paying attention to where those lines are.

Also, that she already knew sleep was going to be a precious commodity this term.

 

 **Grayson, the Keys, the Sword, and the Tester**

 

Abigail fully intends to make a different toast. She does. There are half a dozen traditional ones, and even though Grayson personnel wear their own uniforms and celebrate some holidays their classmates find at the least obscure, to her knowledge none of her male counterparts have ever tried to use one of their own toasts.

But when she lifts her glass, it's what comes to her lips, and even though others are surprised and their words stick a bit when they repeat them back, she's glad. This toast, after all, is who she is, and what she is bringing her Navy toward, and it's only right they should know it.


End file.
